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COPWIGHT DEPOSIT 



CONSOLATION 



Wift Bag's QEorft Series 



CONSOLATION 

A Little Book of Comfort for 
Aching Hearts 



WILLIAM E.^^ARTON, D. D. 

Author of ^^ The Psalms and Their Story," 

'^ A Hero in Homespun," ** Pine Knot," 

The Improvement of Perfection," etc. 



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BOSTON 
L. C. PAGE & COMPANY 

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THE LIBRARY OF 

CONGRESS, 
Two Copjfcd Receiveo 

AUG. 26 190) 

JDOPVRIOMT ENTRV 

ILASSdLXXc. Na 
COPY 8. 



Copyright, igoi 
By L. C. Page & Company 

(incorporated) 



All rights reserved 



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Electrotyped and Printed by C. H, Simonds & Co, 
Boston, Mass., U.S.A. 



CONTENTS. 



A Word of Comfort 

Poem — Love and Death. Edward F. Strange 

The Sacredness of Grief . . . 

The World's Need of Comfort 

What Have I Done to Deserve This Sorrow 
How Can I Bear It? . 

Poem — The Three Lessons. Schiller . 

The Sources of Comfort 

The Blessedness of Sympathy 

The Sunset and the Stars 

How Can I Face the Future ? 

One Day at a Time .... 

Reciprocal Cross-bearing 

Burdens and Relief .... 
The Love of God ..... 

Poem — " Help Thou Mine Unbelief." 
French . . . . . . 

Is God Good ? 

God Is Not on Trial .... 

You Still Have Faith .... 



The Reasons of Things 
Life Is Worth Living .... 
Poem — Spinning. Helen Hunt Jackson 
Is the World a Failure ? . . . 
The Angel's Mistake .... 
The Wrestle with the Unnamed 
There Is Something to Live for 



Elizabeth 



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39 
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43 

45 
46 

48 



VI 



CONTENTS. 



Hold Fast to Duty .... 

The Wearing of Mourning . . . 

Be Not Selfish in Grief .... 
The Blessed Hope 

Poem — The Future. Augusta G. Winthrop 

The Hope of Immortality 

Spirit and Matter . . . 

What Shall We Assume .? . . . 

Need and Provision .... 
Heaven 

Poem — There Is No Death. Unidentified 

The Unspoken Certainties 

The Reunions of Heaven 

The Road to Heaven 

The End and the Beginning ... 

The Death of the Day and the Year 

The Death of My Friend and the New Life of My 
Hope ...... 

The Bulb and the Blossom . . • 



PAGE 

49 
50 

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53 
54 
55 
58 
59 
63 

66 
69 

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IS 

77 
7S 



A WORD OF COMFORT 



LOVE AND DEATH. 

Not here, Oh, Death ! not here. 
Is there no other flower for thee to take? 
All the world is thine, and for its sake, 

Oh, come not here ! '. 

See how I bow myself before thy might — 
Ask what thou wilt but leave this heart to me, 
Then will I deck thee with a garland bright, 
And freely give my sweetest dreams to thee — 
Whisper such loveliness in thine ear 
That thou shalt wish each day to be a night: 

But come not here ! 

Thou canst not come — I will not let thee pass. 
Thou shalt not conquer me. Alas, alas ! 
Think not of what I said — I mean it not. 
I know I cannot stay thee, if the lot 
Is cast. Still, let this one heart live. 
And I will give thee all I have to give. 
Ah, me ! I may not die. With sorrow wild, 
Good Death, have pity on a little child : 

Oh, come not here ! 

Death gently thrust the weeping child aside ; 
But as he slowly passed toward the room — 
Like diamond flashing rose-red in the gloom — 
Glistened a tear not even Death could hide — 

He entered in ... . 

— Edward F. Strange. 



8 



% 



CONSOLATION. 



THE SACREDNESS OF GRIEF. 

Weep, if it relieves your heartache, and do not too 
forcibly repress your tears. The heart knoweth its own 
bitterness, and hath its own road to peace. But even 
while you weep, deny not yourself such comfort as is in 
your sorrow. They have been telling you that the cloud 
will pass in time, and the light will shine again. You 
do not believe it ; this sorrow, you say, can have no 
remedy. But there is comfort in the sorrow itself. 
There is light in the very cloud, as well as hope of light 
in its dispersion. I will not tell you that happier days 
are coming; at least I will not say so now. The 
thought that it can be so is pain to you to-day. But 
to-day there is comfort. All the love you ever had is 
yours still. All the memories of beautiful deeds and 
holy thoughts shared with, or clustered about the de- 
parted, these still are yours. The hopes are gone, some 
of them, but the memories remain, and the abiding in- 
fluence of a beloved life, this still is yours, and this is a 
prophecy of immortality. Weep, if you are helped by 
weeping, but do not refuse the comfort of the present 

9 



lO 



CONSOLA TION. 



hour. To-morrow will bring its own burden and its own 
comfort as well. Do not refuse the comfort, small as it 
seems, which is yours to-day. "There must be light 
behind the cloud/' you say, half doubting while you say 
it. Yes, there is light behind the cloud. There would 
be no cloud if there were no light. But there is light 
/;/ the cloud ; not the glare of the sunlight, which now 
would be too strong for your swollen eyes, but a softened, 
subdued, yet ample light for this day's need. Weep if 
you will, but lift your eyes now and again, and walk in the 
light of such comfort as may be yours to-day. 



A WORD OF COMFORT. II 



THE WORLD'S NEED OF COMFORT. 

The world stands in perpetual need of comfort. 
Each tick of the clock is the quiet death-knell of some 
human life, and few among them all, thank God, depart 
without being mourned by some one. An unmourned 
death is the saddest of all deaths ; those are most blessed 
who are most lamented. The potter s fields of earth 
are small in their proportion to the area of her ceme- 
teries, and for almost every grave in the potter's field 
there is an aching heart somewhere grieving, wondering, 
fearing, hoping, till hope dies out — if it ever does — 
and gives way to a settled sorrow. The very exceptions 
serve to make conspicuous the rule. Few human lives 
are valueless to some other human lives, somewhere. 
And so there is grief, and so there is need of comfort. 
It is good that comfort is required. Tears are earth's 
most eloquent tribute to human worth. It were not 
well that comfort should come too cheaply. Grief 
springs from love, and love is not cheap. Grief bears 
witness to character, and character is the most precious 
thing on earth or in heaven. The world needs comfort 
because the world knows love and recognises worth, and 
knows that life has something worth cherishing, worth 
mourning. Be not too ready to cry out in despair that 
no good world could need so much of comfort. It 
would be a sad world if it needed comfort less. 



12 



CONSOLA TION, 



WHAT HAVE I DONE TO DESERVE THIS 

SORROW ? 

**What have I done that God should punish me 
thus ? " so I hear you ask. If it were in my heart to 
reprove you for any word that you can utter now, this 
would be the word. It is not a wise question. Behind 
the apparent readiness to take blame, if blame may 
justly be given, is an implied indictment against God 
if he can show no blame. Do not ask the question 
again, beloved. Yet, since you have asked it, let me 
tell you, — you have done nothing for which this sorrow 
is a punishment, or if you have, no man is wise enough 
to tell you so. We do not know enough to fasten 
blame upon each other for sorrows such as this. It is 
not because God blames you that you suffer. You 
could not suffer so if you did not love so, and the love 
that makes the pain possible is from God. Could there 
be pleasure if there were no pain } I do not know. I 
do know that such pain as yours springs only out of 
the most beautiful thing on earth, the thing for which 
we have most reason to thank God. Do not reproach 
yourself, and do not reproach God. You have not 
been faultless. There lie in the past occasions for 
regret ; this is no time for regret of them ; you have 
sorrow enough without. We are not faultless. But if 
you laboured with unselfish love for the departed, vex 



I 



A WORD OF COMFORT, 1 3 

not your soul now with useless regrets. Your love 
will be remembered in heaven after the faults have 
been forgotten. It is not your fault, beloved, that this 
sorrow has come. But it will be a fault if you waste in 
idle regrets the resources that are yours for comfort, or 
reproach God for the sorrow while you neglect the 
consolation. I will not reprove you. God does not 
judge you by this passing storm of sorrow, but by 
the level of your life at its calm. Nevertheless, do not 
waste his comfort, but make it your own. 



I 
I 



HOW CAN I BEAR IT? 



IS 



THE THREE LESSONS. 

There are three lessons I would write — 

Three words as with a burning pen, 
In tracings of eternal light, 

Upon the hearts of men. 

Have Hope. Though clouds environ now, 

And gladness hides her face in scorn, 
Put thou the shadow from thy brow — 

No night but hath its morn. 

Have Faith. Where'er thy barque is driven — 
The calm's disport, the tempest's mirth — 

Know this — God rules the host of heaven, 
The inhabitants of earth. 

Have Love. Not love alone for one, 

But man as man thy brother call, 
And scatter like the circling sun 

Thy charities on all. 

Thus grave these lessons on thy soul, — 

Faith, Hope, and Love, — and thou shalt find 

Strength when life's rudest surges roll, 
Light when thou else wert blind. 

— Schiller. 



i6 



HOW CAN I BEAR IT? IJ 



THE SOURCES OF COMFORT. 

The sources of joy are many. They inhere in life 
itself. They appeal to every sense. They take to 
themselves infinite variety in colour and tone and form. 
They take to themselves all shapes of the good, the 
beautiful, and the true. The world is full of them in 
earth, and sky, and sea. They are intellectual, aes- 
thetic, ethical. They are abundant, and none too much 
so ; for the world needs them, every one. But the 
sources of comfort are not many ; yet they are not to 
be despised. They reduce themselves to three : the 
blessedness of sympathy, the assurance of the love of 
God, and the hope of heaven. Make these three your 
own, and your sorrow will not disappear, but the 
question will be answered which now you are asking, 
" How can I bear it ? " 



1 8 CONSOLA TION. 



THE BLESSEDNESS OF SYMPATHY. 

You have learned one lesson from your sorrow, or 
if not yet, then it remains for you to learn. You 
thought at first that no human help could comfort you. 
You wanted to shut yourself up and eat out your own 
heart with sorrow. At first it seemed an intrusion that 
any one presumed to come in upon your grief. But it 
comes to you now with a glad sense of discovery that 
starts your tears anew, that sympathy has its value. 
There has been some intrusive sympathy, perhaps, and 
some mere idle curiosity that masked itself behind a 
profession of sympathy, and these have been trying 
enough. But these have been the exception. You 
have found the comfort of companionship in ways that 
you could never have anticipated. This is one of the 
real consolations of your experience. 

" Words have no comfort for such a sorrow,'' so you 
have said. You were mistaken, and now you know it. 
Words of heartfelt sympathy, words of hope, words of 
good counsel, all these have their value. And some 
words fitly chosen you will remember now as long as 
you live* And yet it is not wisdom that you want just 
now. George Eliot once said, and truly, " More helpful 
than all wisdom is one draught of simple, human pity, 
that will not forsake us." You have found it so. 
Some who had no words to utter, who simply stood by 



HOW CAN I BEAR ITf I9 

your side and mingled their tears with yours, these 
have been among your comforters. Some of them had 
known sorrow, and these wept afresh for yours ; but 
others, whose lives had known no such experience, made 
your sorrow their own for love's sake, and, thank God 
for it, their sympathy is full of comfort for you. 

When Jesus was about to open the eyes of the blind 
man, he looked up to heaven and sighed, and said, 
** Be opened." We cannot spare the sigh. It was a 
sigh of genuine sympathy, and there is no opening of 
blind eyes that is not so accompanied. When he stood 
by the grave of Lazarus, and was about to call the dead 
forth to life, he wept. We could spare the miracle 
better than the tears. To discover that he was moved 
with compassion for human sorrow is to discover that 
sorrow is not wholly comfortless. In like manner, 
though in less degree, every exhibition of genuine 
sympathy reveals God as the source of comfort. Let 
others weep with you ; your own tears will the sooner 
dry, and it will do them good, and you also, that they 
share your grief. 



20 CONSOLA TION. 



THE SUNSET AND THE STARS. 

There is no experience like grief to widen one*s 
thought of his own Ufe's diameter. " Night brings out 
the stars." The stars are a poor consolation for the 
loss of the sun, perhaps, but they show \is celestial 
depths and heights, and extend our vision a thousand- 
fold. These things which the daylight showed were all 
near at hand. The night revealed a thousandfold more 
than it hid from us. Formerly we saw a mile ahead ; 
now we see uncounted millions of miles into the vault 
of the heavens. 

You never knew before how many friends you had. 
Expressions of sympathy have come from forgotten ac- 
quaintances, and from friends unknown. It is a burden, 
almost, to acknowledge them all, but you cannot spare 
them. Each one is a star brought out by your night. 
Together they show how many are the hearts that ache 
with yours. And yet these are not all. There are 
others who would show you kindness if they knew how. 
You have had that feeling sometimes for others, and 
others cherish it now toward you. Be comforted in the 
wealth of friendship now lavished upon you. It does 
not take away the sorrow, and no one pretends that it 
does ; but it is one of the sources of comfort, and just 
now it is yours. 



HOW CAN I BEAR IT? 21 



HOW CAN I FACE THE FUTURE? 

" How can I face the future without my lost one ? '' 
you have asked a hundred times already. I do not 
know, and it is better for you not to ask what no one 
can answer. This day's burden is enough ; do not add 
to it to-morrow's. You will never need God's help and 
comfort more than just now. To-morrow's burden will 
come, and soon enough, but to-day's burden will have been 
lifted before the new one is fastened upon your shoul- 
ders. You are thinking that you could bear to-day if it 
were not for the dread of to-morrow, and you are right. 
Then bear to-day's burden faithfully, and if to-morrow's 
load is to crush you, let it do so to-morrow, and not 
to-day. 

It is this piling up of future sorrow upon the sorrow 
of the present that makes the breaking load. Sufficient 
unto the day is the evil thereof, yea, and sufficient is 
the blessing. What is true of to-morrow is true of to- 
day, — the burden is heavy, but his grace is sufficient. 



22 CONSOLATION, 



ONE DAY AT A TIME. 

We may anticipate and dread as we will, but God has 
made it impossible wholly to overdraw our coming bless- 
ings. Do our best or worst, and we do it quite enough, 
we must await the rising of the sun to begin the day. 
If we anticipate, we do it in the darkness. Wait for 
to-morrow before you undertake to lift to-morrow's load. 
Is not to-day's enough } Neglect not to-day's duty 
under pretence of caring in advance for to-morrow's. 
There is a good little poem by Helen Hunt Jackson, 
with a good lesson and a cheerful ring, such as just 
now you need. Read it, and read our Saviour's words 
also. 

'* Consider the lilies of the field how they grow ; they 
toil not, neither do they spin ; 

" And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all 
his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 

" Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, 
which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, 
shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith } 

"Therefore take no thought, saying. What shall we 
eat .? or, What shall we drink } or, Wherewithal shall 
we be clothed } 

" (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek : ) 
for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of 
all these things. 



HOW CAN I BEAR IT? 2$ 

" But seek ye first the kingdom of God and his right- 
eousness, and all these things shall be added unto you. 

" Take therefore no thought for the morrow : for the 
morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Suf- 
ficient unto the day is the evil thereof." 

ONE DAY AT A TIME. 

One day at a time ! That's all it can be ; 

No faster than that is the hardest fate, 
And days have their limits, however we 

Begin them too early and stretch them too late. 

One day at a time ! 
It's a wholesome rhyme ! 
A good one to live by, 
A day at a time. 

One day at a time ! Every heart that aches, 
Knowing only too well how long they can seem, 

But it's never to-day which the spirit breaks — 
It's the darkened future, without a gleam. 

One day at a time ! What a joy is at height — 
Such joy as the heart can never forget — 

And pulses are throbbing with wild delight, 
How hard to remember that suns must set. 

One day at a time ! But a single day, 

Whatever its load, whatever its length ; 
And there's a bit of precious Scripture to say 
^ That, according to each, shalf be our strength. 

One day at a time ! 'Tis the whole of life ; 

All sorrow, all joy are measured therein ; 
The bond of our purpose, our noblest strife. 

The one only countersign sure to win ! 



I 



24 



CONSOLA TION. 



One day at a time ! 
It's a wholesome rhyme ! 
A good one to live by, 
A day at a time. 



1> 



I/O IV CAN I BEAR IT^ 2$ 



RECIPROCAL CROSS - BEARING. 

There is a reciprocal bearing of crosses in the Chris- 
tian life. No Christian can fully estimate the value to 
the moral universe of his fidelity in affliction. Simon 
the Cyrenian, coming out of the country into Jerusalem 
one day, was suddenly seized and compelled to bear the 
cross of One who had fallen under its load. It was a 
hard experience for Simon, an honest man, no doubt, 
and never till then an associate of criminals. I wonder 
if he bore that burden manfully. I rather think he did, 
for his sons are named as if those for whom the Gospels 
were written might possibly know them, and be glad of 
the information that it was their father, the father of 
Alexander and Rufus, to whom came the distinguished 
honour. The explicit mention of these family names, 
appearing as it does, to indicate that the apostles did 
not lose their association with him, gives us ground to 
hope that Simon did not wholly underestimate the 
honour implied in his cross-bearing. Ah, well for him 
who bears his cross as for his Master ! Jesus, when on 
earth, had need of some one to bear his cross, ay, and 
still has need, and that, maybe, is why you suffer now. 
Do not ask why he has need, or how your sorrow helps 
him; I can answer no more than could Simon. But 
beware lest you show yourself unworthy of sharing his 
sufferings, and yet again beware lest you forget his 



26 CONSOLA TION. 

readiness to bear your cross. Let his own loving shoul- 
der lift now the burden that is too great for you ; for 
he whose cross was borne for him by one of your fellow 
disciples is become the burden-bearer of the world. 



I 






HOW CAN I BEAR IT? 2'J 



BURDENS AND RELIEF. 

We were speaking about burdens. Do you know 
the sweet little poem about the camel ? His burden is 
heavy, his way is through the desert ; and this is 
what you are thinking about yourself. Read the little 
poem, and find a suggestion of cpmfort in it. 

" The camel at the close of day 

Kneels down upon the sandy plain. 
To have his burden lifted off, 
And rest again. 

" My soul, thou, too, shouldst to thy knees 
When daylight draweth to a close, 
And let the Master lift the load, 
And grant repose. 

** Else, how couldst thou to-morrow meet 
With all to-morrow's work to do, 
If thou the burden all the night 
Dost carry through ? 

" The camel kneels at break of day 
To have his guide replace the load. 
Then rises up anew to take 
The desert road. - 

"So shouldst thou kneel at morning dawn, 
That God may give thee daily care. 
Assured that he no load too great 
Will make thee bear." 



% 



THE LOVE OF GOD 



29 



"HELP THOU MINE UNBELIEF." 

Lord, I believe ; for oft my wondering eyes 

In life's strange scene have seen Heaven's good arise 

Where evil erst, and evil sore, had been, 

And men forgetting thee had sunk in sin. 

Lord, I believe ; for I have known thee near 
When all my heart was filled with pain and fear ; 
Thy very presence, mighty Lord, I know 
Thou on thy needy children dost bestow. 

Lord, I believe not yet as fain I would, 
Dimly thy dealings have I understood ; 
Thy word and message yet to me have brought 
Only a shadow of thy wondrous thought. 

Fain would I follow on to know thee. Lord ; 
Fain learn the meaning of thine every word. 
Truth would I know — the truth that dwells in thee, 
Setting the honest heart from doubting free. 

Lord, I believe ; Oh, fan this trembling spark, 
Lest all my hope be lost in endless dark : 
And where I yet believe not, lead thou me, 
And help my unbelief, which seeks for thee. 

— Elisabeth French, 



30 



THE LOVE OF GOD. 3 I 



IS GOD GOOD? 

There are times that shake our easy-going faith to 
its very bed, and experiences that cause us to question 
what we have received as axiomatic. There comes 
sometime to every life, I imagine, some disappoint- 
ment, some tragic disaster, so shocking, so wholly 
without warning, that we ask ourselves, " Is God really 
good ? '' 

Do not be ashamed of having raised the question ; 
nay, it thrust itself unbidden upon. you. Fear not to 
face it honestly, to doubt it, if so you must ; fear only 
to be dishonest with your own soul. It is better to 
doubt than to answer with a platitude that covers the 
nakedness of an unthinking soul with a mere fig-leaf of 
trite phraseology. There is some goodness in the 
world, that is past doubting. If God be not good, why 
has he made us to seek a goodness not in him ? And 
why does he make his own children so that they must 
condemn him as soon as they know what he is } If 
God were not good, what were the source of human 
goodness, and what its reason ? And why should you 
seek for goodness in yourself and demand it of God } 
Fear not to think the problem through, and make your 
honest answer. The goodness of God is the bed-rock 
of the universe. You have nothing else to stand upon. 
Then rest your burden a little. Do not be an Atlas, 



32 CONSOLATION, 

holding up the world by the strength of your poor 
wearied brain and aching head and saddened heart. 
You must trust God for the ground to stand upon, and 
you may as well trust him for the load. 



i 



THE LOVE OF GOD. 33 



GOD IS NOT ON TRIAL. 

God is not on trial, even though you suffer. He 
will yet justify the tremendous demands of faith, the 
demand that a sufferer shall believe in the goodness of 
God. But he is not to be judged by this incident. 
Some things were settled long ago at the cross. Then 
he whom God loved best of the sons of men suffered 
in agony, and men did esteem him smitten of God and 
afflicted, yet in that act was the love of God perfected. 
If God spared not his own Son, but in love gave him 
for us all, and made that love most perfect in the thing 
that for the moment seemed most inconsistent with any 
love at all, it is inexpedient to condemn God now for 
what may be like it in kind and is manifestly less in 
degree. It is you that are on trial, and the trial is 
sore. Believe that God loves you. Nay, do not chide 
yourself for your doubts ; they are part of the disci- 
pline. But trust him, even while you doubt and ques- 
tion. The cross is your shelter. I have seen a picture 
by an American artist of a wayside cross of stone, 
roughly hewn, and a mountain storm beating upon it. 
Under one of its arms huddled a half-dozen little birds, 
sheltered by the cross. Take refuge there, for your 
soul is as one of them, storm-beaten and distressed. 
God proved at the cross that he could both love and 
see his beloved suffer. You are not less dear to him 



34 



CONSOLA TION, 



because of it, nay, he never was so near to you as he 
is in the hour when you cry, " My God, why hast thou 
forsaken me ? '' It is not God who is on trial ; it is 
you ; and God grant that your faith fail not. 



n 



THE LOVE OF GOD. 35 



YOU STILL HAVE FAITH. 

This sorrow has shaken your faith, perhaps, and you 
have wondered whether you will ever think and believe 
as you once did. Perhaps not. It would be strange, 
and I think sad, if this sorrow did not bring to you some 
new view-point of faith. But I cannot think that you 
have broken with the faith of your past. There are 
some things past doubting. You do not disbelieve ; you 
are perplexed, and I do not wonder. But God knows 
your perplexity, and does not impute it to unwillingness 
to believe. There is much less unbelief in the world 
than the world gets credit for. Too many good people 
when in trouble hasten to class themselves with the 
deniers of the faith. There is a little poem by an 
author unknown to me, which I like, and which I think 
is true. 



NO UNBELIEF. 

There is no unbelief; 
Whoever plants a seed beneath the sod, 
And waits to see it push away the sod — 
He trusts in God. 

There is no unbelief; 
Whoever says, when clouds are in the sky, — 
" Be patient, heart ; light breaketh by and by," 
Trusts the Most High. 



3 6 CONSOLA TION. 

There is no unbelief ; 
Whoever sees, 'neath winter's field of snow, 
The silent harvest of the future grow, 
God's power must know. 

There is no unbelief ; 
Whoever lies down on his couch to sleep, 
Content to lock each sense in slumber deep, 
Knows God will keep. 

There is no unbelief ; 
Whoever says, " To-morrow," " The Unknown," 
*' The Future," trusts that Power alone 
He dares disown. 

There is no unbelief ; 
The heart that looks on when the eyelids close. 
And dares to live when life has only woes, 
God's comfort knows. 

There is no unbelief ; 
And day by day, and night, unconsciously, 
The heart lives by that faith the lips deny, — 
God knoweth why. 



THE LOVE OF GOD, 37 



THE REASONS OF THINGS. 

It is a mistake to assume that blessing comes only 
in knowing the reason for things. There is no indica- 
tion in the Bible that Job ever learned the reason for 
his affliction, yet the blessing came. He had to go On 
to the end of his life, wondering why the righteous 
suffer as he had done. He knew some things that he 
had not known before, but the thing he most wanted to 
know he did not learn. A good many of the men of 
the Bible, and some who wrote it, did not know the 
meaning of the experiences whose record we have there. 
Suppose you read the one hundred thirty-first psalm. 
It is very short: 

" Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty, 
Neither do I exercise myself in great matters, 
Or in things too wonderful for me. 

" Surely I have stilled and quieted my soul ; 
Like a weafied child with his mother, 
My soul is with me like a weaned child. 

" O Israel, hope in the Lord 
From this time forth and for evermore." 

The address to Israel and the call to hope seem to 
mark the experience which called forth the psalm as a 
national one, and if so, I suppose the experience cack 
of it was the destruction of the temple and the exile of 



38 CONSOLATION, 

the people in Babylon. Why had this terrible, this 
impossible doom come upon God's chosen people ? 
Many a faith met shipwreck on this rock. The fool 
then said in his heart, " There is no God," and became 
corrupt. But the faithful thought over the problem till 
they were heartsore, and finally gave it up. Only they 
knew that somehow God was back of it, and would 
bring good out of it. Why does a mother suddenly 
change, and deny to her babe to-day what every day of 
his life he has received from her, and has lived upon.? 
How is he to live } What can his mother mean 1 How 
can the mother make it plain to him that love lies back 
of the hard process of weaning } Yet, as the disap- 
pointed child sobs himself to sleep supperless, he knows 
somehow in his baby soul that his mother loves him. 
And so he falls asleep. " Surely I have stilled and 
quieted my soul like a weaned child.*' You are hungry 
and lonely, dear friend, and the dark is full of terror for 
you. Still, trust in God. He is good, and even this 
terrible weaning from what was dearest to you has its 
meaning in love. There is no hatred back of it. There 
is no enmity in the heart of God. When you have 
sobbed yourself to sleep he bends above you, and his 
kiss upon your fevered brow is your dream of peace. 



LIFE IS WORTH LIVING 



39 



SPINNING. 



Like a blind spinner in the sun 

I tread my days ; 
I know that all the threads will run 

Appointed ways ; 
I know each day will bring its task, 
And, being blind, no more I ask. 

I do not know the use or name 

Of what I spin ; 
I only know that some one came 

And laid within 
My hand the thread, and said, " Since you 
Are blind, but one thing you can do." 

Sometimes the threads so rough and fast 

And tangled fly, 
I know wild storms are sweeping past. 

And fear that I 
Shall fall, but dare not try to find 
A safer place, since I am blind. 

I know not why, but I am sure 

That tint and place. 
In some great fabric to endure 

Past time and race. 
My threads will have ; so, from the first, 
Though blind, I never felt accurst. 

I think, perhaps, this trust has sprung 

From one short word 
Said over me when I was young — 

So young I heard 
It, knowing not that God's name signed 
My brow, and sealed me his, though blind. 

40 



LIFE IS WORTH LIVING, 4 1 

But whether this be seal or sign, 

Within, without, 
It matters not. The bond divine 

I never doubt. 
I know he set me here, and still, 
And glad, and blind, I wait his will, 

But listen, listen, day by day. 

To hear their tread. 
Who bear the finished web away, 

And cut the thread, — 
And bring God's message in the sun, 
" Thou poor blind spinner, work is done." 

— Helen Hunt Jackson. 



LIFE IS WORTH LIVING. 43 



IS THE WORLD A FAILURE? 

My friend looked at me through his tears, and said, 
" Oh, if there is no life beyond this, the universe is a 
stupendous failure ! '* I knew the pain out of which 
he wrung that passionate cry, and I thought it not a 
favourable time to tell him that he was wrong. But 
another day, when his tears were dry, and he looked 
sadly out upon life again, I told him what was in my 
heart. 

No, I cannot say that if this life were all, the uni- 
verse were a blunder. In the several departments of 
my friend's great factory are kept separate books, and 
while every casting and every stick of timber gives 
its final account in the completed product, a separate 
reckoning is made of each section of the work, and care 
is taken that each shall pay for its own expenses and 
show its own margin of profit. I am not willing to 
charge a margin to the bad in God*s reckoning with 
this world, hoping that he will make up the deficit out 
of the undue earnings of heaven. I am persuaded that 
this world pays. The very life that my friend was 
mourning was proof of it. Education, culture, con- 
quest of passion, all these were gathered up in that 
life, and dedicated to God and humanity. Oh, it is 
glorious to live when one can live gloriously ! And 
the dead man had so lived, and it was the glory of his 



44 



CONSOLA TION. 



life that made my friend so sad, for earth seemed lonely 
after he had gone. But the life that had gone out here 
to be lighted elsewhere, had left its glow in a thousand 
hearts. No, even if there were no heaven, it had been 
well for that man to live. 



LIFE IS WORTH LIVING, 45 



THE ANGEL'S MISTAKE. 

An angel, seeing the earth in process of forming, 
must have thought a thousand times that God had 
changed his plan. Forests that clothed the earth with 
more than tropic wealth and took millenniums to grow, 
went down below marsh and clay and were lost for 
ever. Tremendous upheavals undid the work which 
had been long ages in bringing to perfection. And yet, 
day by day, and period by period, God saw his work, 
and called it good. Many centuries later, men dug 
gold out of the fissures made by the upheavals, and 
found precious gems that were formed in the catas- 
trophes of former ages, and dug down to where the 
forests were buried and brought up the coal to warm 
their hearths and turn the wheels of industry. Even 
so the catastrophes of life have their moral value. 



46 CONSOLATION. 



THE WRESTLE WITH THE UNNAMED. 

"If we only knew the meaning of our sorrows!'* 
We do not always. We wrestle alone with the angel, 
and he will not tell his name. We first call him " In- 
scrutable Providence/' and then we name him "Natural 
Law," and we seek for names and definitions that we 
may adequately classify our sad experience. I remem- 
ber the war-time poem, " Drafted,'' in which the widow 
mourns that her one slender boy is called into the 
army : 

" Five stalwart sons has my neighbour, 
And never the lot upon one ; 
Is this one of fortune's caprices, 
Or is it God's will that is done ? " 

I suppose the poor widow never knew just how to 
answer that question. And we do not know. One 
man is satisfied to say, " It is God's will, and I am 
content." Another says, "It is because the doctors 
knew no better." And so on. But I am not willing 
to believe that God is not somehow responsible for it 
all, and will yet show the goodness that underlies it all. 
We wrestle on in the darkness, and the angel is silent. 
Nevertheless, let us hold to him. We shall bear to our 
grave the mark of the struggle. We shall go forth 
halting on the thigh which the angel touched. Yet 
from our sorrow we shall come forth, knowing that as 



LIFE IS WORTH LIVING. 47 

princes we have wrestled with God and have prevailed. 
And sometime we shall know the meaning of our 
sorrows. 

«* Not now, but in the coming years, 
It may be in the better land, 
We'll read the meaning of our tears, 
And then, and then we'll understand." 



48 CONSOLA TION, 



THERE IS SOMETHING TO LIVE FOR. 

There is something left to live for. I know you say 
it is not so, but you are wrong about it. Life's inter- 
ests are many, and even if that has departed which you 
held dearest, something is left. There is something 
left to love, something left to hope for, some one more 
sad than yourself to comfort. And if all these voices 
of love and hope and sympathy were dead to you, then 
there is one other, stern and hard, but blessed, that of 
duty. To-morrow's needs will force upon you to-mor- 
row's tasks. Their very monotony is a blessing. That 
they have grouped themselves almost mechanically, and 
have settled into habits, is itself a thing to be thankful 
for. People must eat and drink and provide raiment 
and a place to sleep even in time of sorrow. Despise 
not the humble duties that call you back from yourself. 
They are God's angels in disguise. Make large room 
in your saddened life for the sombre-robed angel Duty, 
and beside her in brighter apparel soon shall stand 
Faith, Hope, and Love. There is more to live for than 
you think. Yes, for God's two worlds are one ; there 
is more now to live for than ever. Take heart and live 
bravely and well. 



LIFE IS WORTH LIVING. 49 



HOLD FAST TO DUTY. 

Hold fast to duty even though hope is dead. If your 
faith in all else fails, cling to duty the more strenuously. 
If you let duty go, all is gone, but if you hold her fast, 
she will be your guide to faith and hope. It is not 
necessary to know the meaning of our duties, even, 
much less of our sorrows ; that they are duties is suffi- 
cient. Do them with all your heart, and fear not ; 
better days will come. 

Duty, hard and stern, has saved all the great souls in 
the midst of trial. This was what made Job great, — 
it was not his patience, but his stern determination that, 
though he lost God and friends and hope, as well as 
property and health, he would hold to the good. He 
lost his patience more than once, but he never lost his 
fidelity to the right. Now, though everything else 
goes by the board, here is one unbroken piece of the 
ship. Hold on to the right, and you shall be kept from 
sinking. I doubt not the result, but even if I knew 
that your light must go out in darkness, and no hope 
ever come to you again in earth or heaven, this were 
still my word to you, — hold fast to duty. 



50 CONSOLA TION. 



THE WEARING OF MOURNING. 

No, do not put on the heavy black weeds. I recog- 
nise that clothing is largely a matter of personal taste 
and of public sentiment, and so will not dictate to you. 
But this is my advice. Put off gay colours for a sea- 
son if you like, but do not put on the conventional 
mourning attire. What right have you to thrust your 
own sorrow upon others, to advertise your grief, to say 
to all men, " Look at me, pity me, I am one who suf- 
fers } '' Has the world no burdens of its own } Are 
you not strong enough to bear this with such help as 
God and your friends shall give, or must you thrust it 
upon others, whether they will or no } Your grief, you 
say, demands this expression; besides, what will people 
say if you do not } Your grief will express itself where 
it has a right, and as for what people will say, some will 
say one thing and some another, but the wiser and truer 
friends will commend your wisdom, and will count your 
grief the more real, being strong enough not to need 
proclaiming. You can afford it, perhaps ; another, as 
truly loving and mourning as you, will feel constrained 
by your example to follow an expensive, cruel custom, 
or encouraged to face the world bravely and' go on. 
These dense black garments are heathen symbols of 
inconsolable grief ; they have no place in a Christian's 
funeral. Discard the gay colours if you will ; but let 
those wear the horrible crepe who have not your com- 
fort and hope. 



LIFE IS WORTH LIVING. 5 I 



BE NOT SELFISH IN GRIEF. 

Grief is often selfish, and so is the more miserable. 
Nursing its own sorrow with morbid affection that some- 
times almost forgets the object of affection, so dear has 
become the grief itself, it hardens its heart against the 
need of the great world for sympathy, and says, " I 
have no tears for others ; my own grief is all that I 
can bear, and more.'' It is all that you can bear, and 
more ; and it had well-nigh broken you down had not 
others shared it with you. Go to, now, and find an- 
other more sad than yourself, and lift for an hour the 
burden that presses sore upon some weaker, needier 
soul ; and, behold, thou shalt return with thine own 
burden lightened in the lightening of the burden of 
another. 



THE BLESSED HOPE 



S3 



THE FUTURE. 

What may we take into that vast Forever? 

That marble door 
Admits no fruit of all our long endeavour, 

No fame-wreathed crown we wore, 

No garnered lore. 

What can we bear beyond the unknown portal ? 

No gold, no gains 
Of all our toiling ; in the life immortal 

No hoarded wealth remains. 

Nor gilds, nor stains. 

Naked from out that far abyss behind us 

We entered here; 
No word came with our coming to remind us 

What wondrous word was near. 

No hope, no fear. 

Into the silent starless night before us. 

Naked we glide. 
No hand has mapped the constellation o'er us, 

No comrade at our side, 

No chart, no guide. 

Yet fearless toward that midnight black and hollow 

Our footsteps fare ; 
The beckoning of a Father's hand we follow — 

His love alone is there. 

No curse, no care. 

— Augusta G. Winthrop. 



54 



THE BLESSED HOPE. 55 



THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY. 

What a wonderful thing is this beUef in immortahty ! 
More daring than Prometheus when he snatched fire 
from the hand .of Jove is this astounding presumption 
of humanity which would rise to share immortality with 
God. If the hope is of revelation, then here revelation 
reaches its sublimest crest. If the hope be that which 
springs out of the human heart, then it is because life 
is good, and the human mind in its glorious ambition 
for righteousness will be content with nothing less. 
And such an ambition, such a longing, such a con- 
viction, is prophetic of the reality. 

A recent editorial paragraph in the Christian Register 
contains these strong, true words : 

" One of the most astonishing things in the history of man is 
the origin and growth of the doctrine of immortahty. Whether 
or not with Theodore Parker we claim that the hope is universal 
and intuitive, the wonder of it remains. Out of the most diverse 
experiences, supported by arguments totally unlike each other, 
and held by tribes, nations, and churches which reject each other's 
evidences, the belief and hope in the future life springs up from 
the soil of human nature wherever love abounds and flourishes. 
The hope may seem to depend upon a narrative : it remains when 
the narrative is discredited. The doctrine is declared with the 
sanctions of a special divine revelation, and is accepted after the 
special revelation is set aside. Against argument and criticism 
and scientific evidence it pushes its way like the vigorous plant 
life, which in ancient lands heaves up the huge foundation-stones 



5 6 CONSOLA TION, 

of heathen temples and royal palaces. In many ways this blind, 
loving, unreasoning, but reasonable instinct of immortality shows 
its prodigious energy. That man ever thought of living another 
life is a miracle ; that the hope of it has sustained men and 
women under every trial and trouble is still more miraculous." 

Let us not shrink from faith in immortality because 
it seems to involve a miracle. That v^e should hold 
the faith at all is hardly less than a miracle : that we 
should hold a belief so tenaciously, and that men so 
universally should hold it, without the reality behind it, 
would be the greatest and the saddest of all miracles 
since the world began. 

The hope of immortality is the highest tribute which 
the human mind has paid to the value of life. We ask 
sometimes whether life is worth living, but we shrink 
from extinction. In our least hopeful moments we get 
a look over the precipice, along whose edge we walk 
for threescore years, and understand something of the 
feeling of those who, weary of the perilous climb, the 
desperate and uncertain scramble for a foothold, and 
the loss of hope in the gaining of any summit, leap over 
and seek rest in the abyss ; but the horror of the black- 
ness below repels us, and the light upon the summit 
still tempts on. We lie down and die, at last, with the 
summit far off as the pot of gold at the rainbow's base, 
but we die, if we have been faithful, in the sunlight. 
Ah, yes, the climb has been worth while! It almost 
makes us shudder sometimes to look back and see how 
far we have ascended, and the top is nearer than when 
we begaUe. And yet does the summit challenge us in 



THE BLESSED HOPE. 57 

vain ? Shall no man ever stand on its topmost crest of 
perfected manhood ? Even if we knew that it was 
impossible, we could not refuse to climb. But while 
there is life there is hope. He who falls midway of 
the ascent, with his ** banner with the strange device " 
still pointing toward the unattained summit, dies in 
the hope of another climb, and who shall limit its 
possibilities ? 



5 8 CONSOLA TION, 



SPIRIT AND MATTER. 

We grow prodigiously wise on a very little science, 
and say, " We have not yet learned any means by which 
spirit can exist apart from organised matter/' No, 
and, except that we have witnessed it, we know no 
means whereby spirit can coexist with organised mat- 
ter. There is such a thing as spirit ; that we know. 
If it is a product of matter, we have that fact yet 
to learn. Is it strange that in a world of matter we 
should know spirit only as related to matter.? What 
a wonder it is that in such a world we should know 
spirit at all. But we do know it, and know that we 
are spirit ; that the spirit self is the real self, and not 
the material self. If the material self did not create 
the spirit self, why should it be a thing incredible that 
it cannot destroy what it did not create 1 Far back as 
the time of Job, it was declared that there is a spirit 
in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth 
him understanding. The affirmations of such a spirit. 
Heaven-taught, are of superiority to matter. The world 
of matter shrinks daily in proportion to the supremacy 
of mind. To subdue the world of matter, and establish 
the supremacy of soul, this is ever man's task on earth ; 
and the soul, with insistent iteration, declares its stub- 
born refusal to be obliterated with the dissolution of 
the body. Nay, it has found that even the body, as 
to its matter, survives, and it will not hold that its own 
spiritual individuality is less sacred or less destructible. 



THE BLESSED HOPE. 59 



WHAT SHALL WE ASSUME? 

Men say, ** You cannot demonstrate that you are to 
live for ever." No ; I cannot even demonstrate that I 
now live. Demonstration is for mathematics. Facts 
do not admit of demonstration. I cannot demonstrate 
any fact of the present, much less of the future. And 
if we cannot demonstrate, we cannot disprove it. Why 
should we assume the reverse of the soul's emphatic 
and persistent expectation, and the hope of the realisa- 
tion of the ideal of human life? Those are good and 
wise words of Washington Gladden : 

"Assume that death ends all, and you have a theory 
of the universe which confounds your reason, and scoffs 
at your sense of justice, and takes the nerve out of 
your courage, and freezes hope at the bottom of your 
heart. Assume that death ends all, and the springtime 
has no promise for you, and the sunrise no gospel, and 
the stars in the black vault overhead mock you at your 
prayers. 

"You simply cannot assume any such theory. If 
you think you do, it is only because you have not 
thought it through ; you do not know what it means. 
You cannot thoughtfully and consistently accept a the- 
ory of life which brings intellectual confusion and moral 
paralysis. You know that that cannot be a right theory. 
You know it, because the moment you try to live by it, 



6o CONSOLA TION. 

you find that it does not work. It makes nonsense of 
your thinking, and fooHshness of your toiUng and striv- 
ing. 

*^ Assume the other theory, then. One or the other 
you have got to assume. On one or the other you have 
got to rest your soul. To the one or the other you must 
make your Hfe conform. Assume the affirmation in- 
stead of the negation of Hfe beyond the grave. Assume 
it, just as you assume the uniformity of law, the uni- 
versality of love. Indeed, after you have assumed God, 
you cannot, without doing violence to your reason, fail 
to assume immortality ; for, if love is the heart of the 
universe, the universe is not a fraud, and the deepest 
instincts of our lives can be trusted. Assume that they 
are telling you the truth, and build your life on that 
foundation : live as you ought to live if life goes on 
for ever, and the future is the harvest of the present. 
Think as you must think if there is a day after to-day, 
and the eternal years of God belong to truth and justice 
and righteousness. Bring your own sorrows, disappoint- 
ments, losses, struggles, privations, under that aeonian 
light, and consider them there. Let that light shine 
into the city slums, into the sodden faces of the sinking 
throng, into the lives of the men and women who have 
been the victims of greed and cruelty, into all the hope- 
less entanglements of earth and time. Think of all 
these children of men as heirs of immortality, and as 
the sons and daughters of One whose mercy endureth 
for ever. What a great uplift of hope and confidence 
and courage comes to you with this assurance ! If this 



THE BLESSED HOPE, 6 1 

is true, God's in his heaven, and it is all right with the 
world. If this is true, life does make sense ; and all 
the tangles will be straightened out in God's own time. 
It is worth while to fight and wait and endure : the end 
is sure. The spring renews her promise, the sunrise 
tells again of life after death, and the stars rekindle in 
our hearts the assurance of hope. We walk abroad 
under the sun with the light of God in our faces, and 
in the slow watches of the night we 

** < Hear, at times, a sentinel, 

Who moves about from place to place. 
And whispers to the worlds of space 
In the deep night that all is well.' 

" And this, my friends, I believe to be the only sure 
remedy for doubt, concerning this great matter. The 
only thing for you to do, if you want to be sure of it, is 
just what Aristotle told you to do many centuries ago, 
— ' Live as nearly as you can the immortal life.' Live 
it, and it will prove itself. Live the kind of life you 
ought to live if you are to live for ever, and your doubts 
will disappear. And the principle which has come to 
light in this discussion — that all fundamental things 
have to be assumed — makes it plain that this is no 
rash venture, but the soundest and sanest philosophy. 

"A good man of the Catholic faith has written a 
book entitled *The Practice of the Presence of God.' 
What a luminous title ! That is just what religion is. 
It is the practice of the presence of God ; living all the 
while as if you were always in his presence ; as if he 



62 CONSOLA no AT. 

were, as the psalmist says, at your right hand, mo- 
mently, to shield you, to keep you, to guide you, to 
inspire you. What a true, brave, quiet, strong, victori- 
ous life a man would live of whom this was true ! And 
how sure he would be of God ! Is there any other way 
to be sure of him ? 

" The truth of the life to come will be verified in the 
same way. As Aristotle tells us, we must practise im- 
mortality. We have theorised about it, argued about 
it, hunted the universe over for proofs of it, sought it, 
alas ! in many incantations and juggleries : suppose we 
stop speculating about the immortal life, and begin to 
practise it. That is not a mystical injunction. You 
know well enough what kind of life it is that ought to 
continue : live that life. Take all its great implications 
and expectations and assurances into your thought, and 
let them rule there. Take its great hopes into your 
heart, and make them welcome there. Be the kind 
of man you ought to be if this doctrine is true. What 
will happen to you if you do 1 Do you not know } Are 
you not sure that it would make you a strong, brave, 
happy man } Would you not face life with courage and 
confidence } Do you not feel that Saint John*s words 
would prove true : ^ He that hath this hope in him puri- 
fieth himself ? ' *' 



THE BLESSED HOPE, 63 



NEED AND PROVISION. 

Do I believe in immortality ? I do. I think I should 
believe in it even if there were no Bible. Why do we 
long for immortality if there is no such thing t In all 
this universe, far as we can explore or pierce or sound, 
there is no need that is not answered by a provision for 
its satisfaction, no appetite that has not its appropriate 
food, no normal desire that has not its complementary 
object of affection. The fish in Mammoth Cave have 
no eyes ; it were a mockery to make eyes and deny 
light ; God has not done so. 

God might better have made me with eyes and shut 
me up in impenetrable darkness, than to have made me 
with a soul that longs to see him and my departed loved 
ones, if he has for me no beatific vision. God might bet- 
ter have made me with ears and made all nature dumb, 
and hushed the song of the bird, and given to my friend 
no speech, than to have made me with a soul that listens, 
Ustens, listens, at the mouth of the grave; if he have 
no message for me from the beyond, God might better 
have made me with hands, and made all things elude 
my grasp, so that I reach, and reach, and reach, and 
clutch thin air, than to have made me with a soul that 
stretches out its hands into the night about me, if they 
are not yet to thrill with an answering hand-clasp from 
the other world. The sparrow's needs and longings are 



64 CONSOLATION, 

satisfied from his hand, and we are of more value than 
many sparrows ; God will not disappoint our fondest 
hopes. Somewhere, sometime, God will give to us the 
good we strive for and the friends we have ''loved long 
since and lost awhile." Believe it, and be comforted. 



HEAVEN 



65 



THERE IS NO DEATH. 

There is no death ! The stars go down 
To rise upon some fairer shore ; 

And bright in Heaven's jewelled crown 
They shine for evermore. 

There is no death ! The dust we tread 
Shall change beneath the summer showers 

To golden grain or mellow fruit 
Or rainbow-tinted flowers. 

The granite rocks disorganise 

To feed the hungry moss they bear; 

The forest leaves drink daily life 
From out the viewless air. 

There is no death ! The leaves may fall, 
The flowers fade and pass away — ■- 

They only wait through wintry hours 
The coming of the May. 

There is no death ! An angel form 
Walks o'er the earth with silent tread ; 

He bears our best-loved things away, 
And then we call them *' dead." 

He leaves our hearts all desolate. 

He plucks our fairest, sweetest flowers, — 

Transplanted into bliss, they now 
Adorn immortal bowers. 

The bird-like voice whose joyous tones 
Made glad this scene of sin and strife, 

Sings now her everlasting song 
Amid the Tree of Life. 

66 



HE A VEN, 67 

And when he sees a smile too bright, 

Or heart too pure for taint of vice, 
He bears it to that world of light, 

To dwell in Paradise. 

Born into that undying life, 

They leave us but to come again ; 
With joy we welcome them, — the same 

Except in sin and pain. 

• 

And ever near us, though unseen, 

The dear immortal spirits tread ; 
For all the boundless universe 

Is life, — there are no Dead. 

— Unidentified, 



HE A ven: 69 



THE UNSPOKEN CERTAINTIES. 

" If it were not so, I would have told you ! '* I do 
not know of a more blessed word in the whole Bible. 
Oh, the blessedness of the unspoken certainties of the 
Christian life ! Our Lord had never told his disciples 
about the Father's house with many homes, yet he 
assumes that they might almost have known it. *' If it 
were not so, I would have told you/' And so, about 
the most blessed thing he ever told to his disciples, the 
ground of his precious *' Let not your heart be troub- 
led,'' he reckoned among the things that might almost 
have been taken without telling, on the strength of our 
knowledge of God. 

** Shall we know our loved ones there } " Yes ; " If 
it were not so, I would have told you." Shall we find 
there activities that still test our souls and give them 
glad employment } Yes ; " If it were not so, I would 
have told you." Shall all the sorrows of life find their 
full explanation, and shall we see that some good 
reason and some truest love lay back of it all } Yes ; 
"If it were not so, I would have told you." Shall 
every good thing we dream of heaven be true, or a 
better thing be provided in place of it } Yes ; " If it 
were not so, I would have told you." Shall we con- 
tinue to learn, our minds expanding, our spirits gaining 



CONSOLA TION. 



strength, our souls attaining more to the Hkeness of 
God ? Yes ; " If it were not so, I would have told 
you/' Thank God for the unspoken certainties. We 
know that no good thing will he withhold from us. 



HE A VEN. 7 I 



THE REUNIONS OF HEAVEN. 

" In heaven they neither marry nor are given in 
marriage." Does that mean that we are to sustain 
to each other no relations corresponding to those of 
earth ? I think not. Marriage as we know it on earth 
has its first reason in the bearing of children ; there is 
no such reason for marriage in heaven, and can be no 
marriage with the same physical relations. It would be 
both bewildering and humiliating if we were to think 
otherwise. But that does not mean that the experiences 
of earth count for nothing, and that the affections of 
earth are outgrown. It is those very affections, in good 
part, that fit us for immortality. They are not pur- 
poseless. We shall have our personal affections in 
heaven, and souls that answer to them. We shall not 
all be on a dead level of experience there, nor shall we 
choose our nearest friends at random. The house with 
many mansions has some inner rooms sacred to the 
eternal friendships. This is all I know, but I am sure 
that this must be true. Our loved ones are safe with 
him, and they are saved for us. We shall not monop- 
olise them ; they belong to all of heaven's larger 
interests. We learn this in life when our children grow 
up and settle in homes of their own ; they become the 
world's, but they are still ours. There will be some 
way, beloved, in which your own dear ones shall serve 
all the larger needs and relations of heaven, and still 
be your own. Believe it, and be comforted, 



72 CONSOLA TION, 



THE ROAD TO HEAVEN. 

Heaven is reached by the road of self-forgetfulness. 
Those who strive to be good in order that they may go 
to heaven, may not wholly fail to get there ; but they 
will come in far behind those who simply seek to do 
good, and in so doing become good. He soonest reaches 
heaven who makes a heaven on earth for others. Even 
the Son of God turned his back on heaven for our 
sakes; wherefore God highly exalted him, and gave 
him the name that is above every name, both in earth 
and heaven. Those who strive for heaven often fall 
short by reason of the selfishness of their effort ; but a 
multitude of those on the right hand of the King are 
there by reason of good deeds done and forgotten. 
"Lord, when saw we Thee an hungered, and fed 
Thee } '* they ask, and hold themselves back a little as 
the angels lead them in. They enter with glad wonder 
and surprise, for they have been so busy giving cups 
of cold water in the spirit of the Christ, they have 
almost forgotten to seek heaven for themselves, and so 
have most speedily found it ; for the Lord knoweth 
them that are his. Wherefore, take courage; forget 
thyself; help thy brother in the name and spirit of 
the Christ ; and lo, heaven for thee is hardly out 
of sight. 



HE A VEN. 73 



THE END AND THE BEGINNING. 

We need continually to revise our thought of the 
end of things. Once, when we knew a very little less 
than the little we still know, we saw fire burn the wood, 
and we said, "Combustion is the end of matter;" but 
a man a little wiser than we said to us, " No ; it but 
changes its form. Combustion is powerless to destroy. 
We have found no means of destroying an atom. All 
matter that ever has been abides." Then he saw the 
lightning rend the oak, or fly through space and lose 
itself in the void, and we said, "Thus force ends, — 
expends itself, and dies." And then another man, a 
little, and only a little, wiser, said to us, " There is no 
loss of force. So far as we can see, there never has 
been nor will be. All force abides. All that was in — 

" < The snowfall in the river, 
A moment white, then melts for ever, 
Or in the borealis race 
That flit ere you can point the place, 
Or in the rainbow's lovely form 
Evanishing amid the storm,' — 

all this abides, and all else, in undiminished power. 
There is no death of matter. There is no grave of 
energy." 

O foolish, and slow of heart to believe ! Are we not 
ready for the next lesson 1 Our brother falls, and we 



74 CONSOLA TION. 

Stand beside his grave ; and we say, as the dust returns 
to its kindred dust, " It is the end/* Then there stands 
One beside us and points with a pierced hand to a stone 
rolled away and a broken seal, and says, " Do matter 
and force abide ? and does mind alone perish ? Is God 
parsimonious with his cheapest and wasteful of his 
dearest products ? Matter God holds cheap, and worlds 
are but as dust in the balance, but character costs 
centuries of patient effort, God*s best effort, Geth- 
semanes of divine sorrow. Calvaries of redemptive 
struggle, and will he waste it? In life doth not the 
fittest survive? and in death shall the fittest alone of 
all things perish ? I am the resurrection and the life. 
He that believeth on me, though he were dead, yet 
shall he live, and whosoever liveth and beheveth on me 
shall never die. Believest thou this?" And though 
the tears blind us that we cannot see his form, we 
hear his voice and believe, and death has lost its 
sting. 



HEAVEN. 75 



THE DEATH OF THE DAY AND THE 

YEAR. 

I REMEMBER how the day died. The sun went down, 
and the shadows deepened into darkness and the dark- 
ness into the blackness of midnight, and I shuddered in 
my loneHness and dread, and I said, ''This is the end." 
I gazed long at the place where the sun had last been, 
and there was no blacker spot in all the heavens than 
there, and I turned my back upon it, heart sore and 
desolate. But I remembered that as the sun descended 
toward the horizon, it lighted up the west with a glory 
which even the noonday had not known, and I asked 
myself why the day smiled as it died, and lo, as I 
pondered, I lifted my eyes to the east, and the light 
was breaking for a new and fairer morning. 

I remember how the year died. The frost came, 
and the flowers wilted where they stood, and bowed 
their faded blossoms to earth. The leaves fell, and 
were driven before the wind. The clouds put on their 
black robes, and the heavens, attired in deep mourning, 
gathered above the grave, and rained tears upon the 
dead earth, and then wrapped it in its mantle of snow, 
and left it, silent, alone, and dead. But as I thought 
of these things, I remembered how the forests, ere they 
dropped their leaves, put on their most glorious colours, 



1^ 



CONSOLA TlOm 



and smiled in the face of the frost, and every leaf as it 
fluttered helplessly from its perch rejoiced in the bud 
which it had left beneath its stem as the prophecy of 
another spring. 






HE A VEN. yy 



THE DEATH OF MY FRIEND AND THE 

NEW LIFE OF MY HOPE. 

I REMEMBER how my friend died, and the life that 
was so dear to me slipped away beyond the arms that 
would have held it close. And sometimes, as I have 
thought mournfully of these things, I have said, "That 
was the end." But in my heart I know it is not so. 
With God there is no end, but instead there are ten 
thousand new beginnings. There is no night that has 
not its promise of a morning. There is no winter that 
is not full of promise of a spring. There is no death 
that is not in order to fulness of life. 
LofC. 



78 CONSOLA TION. 



THE BULB AND THE BLOSSOM. 

The spring had come, and I held in my hand an 
Easter Hly. I had planted the bulb when the leaves 
were falling, and buried it in the earth. It was not a 
thing of beauty, but I had memories and hopes. I 
cherished those hopes through the long, cold winter, 
and one warm, bright day in the spring, when the birds 
had come, and earth was green in her resurrection robe, 
I held the glorious white blossom in my hand, and gazed 
down into its heart of gold. Then I thought of the 
friend I had lost, and how I had buried the sacred dust, 
that was not beautiful save as it reminded me of what 
it had been, and gave me hope for what is to be. Then 
I looked out at the beautiful earth that was fresh again 
from the hand of God as in creation's morning, and my 
heart swelled like a bursting bud in the springtime, for 
what I buried was the bulb of my friend's dear life, 
and the blossom shall grow sweet and fair some coming 
springtime, in the garden of God above. 



THE END. 



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